KAIRA VLBI data storage

KAIRA (= Kilpisjärvi Atmospheric Imaging Receiver Array) is a multi-purpose phased-array used for a variety of different experiments and observations. It is still running and still doing science. Normally, it is doing riometry, scintillation monitoring, solar observing and all-sky imaging. However, every so often it is used for specific campaigns and experiments.

On Saturday night, KAIRA was involved in a VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry) experiment with the rest of the LOFAR network. However, unlike the other LOFAR international stations, it cannot stream the data directly to the VLBI correlator, because the network is too slow. Instead the data are recorded to a local disk, then transferred off onto an external USB drive and then moved to a location which does have the necessary network capacity.

KAIRA VLBI data storage

Data rates for VLBI experiments are very high. The experiment we ran lasted three hours. In that time, we took just over 2500 Gbytes of data.